Press Release

Jorum learning and teaching competition with ALT - prizes awarded at ALT-C. First prize was awarded to ‘Making Group-work work’, developed by LearnHigher, a collaboration between the Universities of Brunel, Bradford and Leeds.

Oxford, United Kingdom, December 03, 2009 --(PR.com)-- The Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition (previously known as the Learning Object Competition) was again held in conjunction with the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) this year. This is the first time Jorum has hosted the competition, sponsored by Intrallect and previously run by Intrallect.

Louise Egan, Jorum Communications Officer, said, “The panel of judges were looking for exciting, innovative learning and teaching resources that were created under a Creative Commons licence. The Jorum team would like to thank all those who took the time to enter – the standard of entries received was outstanding, with many resources submitted from a diverse range of projects. We were delighted to see the talent that exists in the creation of learning and teaching resources. These are exactly the kind of materials that we want to encourage people to share with other users through the Jorum online service.”

Jorum is a JISC-funded online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK colleges and universities. It exists to encourage sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials created by the community for the community.

The shortlist of commended resources was presented in the main lecture theatre during ALT’s September conference and the top three entrants were awarded their prizes at the conference’s Gala Dinner.

First prize was awarded to ‘Making Group-work work’, developed by LearnHigher, a collaboration between the Universities of Brunel, Bradford and Leeds which involves 10 video episodes showing five students on the journey of a group project. This multimedia resource helps students and tutors overcome the challenges of group work and episodes are accompanied by audio clips and discussion points to help learners explore listening and interpersonal skills, oral presentations and group work.

Second prize went to a tutorial entitled Introducing English as a Lingua Franca an activity for students who are working in mixed language groups. The York St John University resource aims to help students raise their awareness of the use of English as a lingua franca and how they are using it in the classroom.

Delivering student workshops, a series of resources by the University of Leeds, Reading and CATS Consulting Ltd, on behalf of LearnHigher, won the third prize. This takes tutors through step-by-step processes of planning a workshop, including suggested icebreakers and specific interactive activities, all supplemented by handouts, PowerPoint presentations and lesson plans.

All resources entered into the competition will be available through JorumOpen, when released in January 2010. This new service will allow free access to learning and teaching resources using Creative Commons (CC) licences, for all to benefit worldwide.

The competition will run again in 2010, to receive notification, join the Jorum mailing list or look out for announcements on the website.

Notes to editors:

High resolution photographs available on request.

What is Jorum? A free online service for learning and teaching materials for UK staff in FE and HE funded by JISC.

The finalists were asked to comment on why they make their resources available open access and the reasons they want to share using Jorum:

“It takes time and money to produce the resources - it would be a shame not to share them more widely" Colin Paton, Senior E-learning Project Manager (SCIE).

“Jorum, being the UK's national digital repository for academic learning resources for FE & HE, means that submission to Jorum would probably be one of the best ways in increasing awareness and making our resources available for other people to use. This gains exposure for us and the university, and opens doors for possible collaboration with other universities" Mark Dransfield, e-Learning Adviser (York St John University).

The Jorum team is keen to encourage further deposit of resources created under creative commons licences. Deposit now via the Jorum OER Deposit Tool - http://www.jorum.ac.uk/deposit/

About ALTALT (the Association for Learning Technology) is a professional and scholarly association which brings together all those with an interest in the use of learning technology. There are over 230 organisational members from higher and further education institutions, private and public sector organisations and over 650 individual members. Sponsoring members include Becta, JISC, HEFCE, Sun, the Scottish Funding Council, Adobe, and the Learning and Skills Council.

ALT organises an annual conference. In 2010 the theme will be: "Into something rich and strange" - making sense of the sea-change. It will take place in Nottingham, UK from 7-9 September 2010 and will discuss the structural and pervasive shift in the nature of the Internet and its impact on education.